buccaneer's pistol
shot, as though he had been slain on the spot.

Long illness, with all the thought and reflection it had brought, had so
far changed and refined Stead that his awkward bashfulness and lack of
words had passed from him, and when he saw the clergyman overcome with
emotion at the thought of all he had undergone he said,

"Never heed it, your reverence, it has come to be all joy to me to have
had a little to bear for the Master! 'Tis hard on Patience and Ben, but
they are very good to me; and being sick gives time for such comforts as
God sends me. It is more than all I could have had here."

"I am sure of that, my dear boy. I was not grieving that I gave you
the trust, but thinking what a blessed thing it is to have kept it thus
faithfully."

Two Sundays later, the Feast was again meetly spread in Elmwood Church,
the Altar restored to its place, and all as reverently arranged as it
could yet be among the broken carved work.

In some respects it was a mournful service, few there were who after the
lapse of seventeen years even remembered the outlines of the old forms;
and the younger people knew not when to kneel or stand. There were
few who could read, and even for those who could there were only four
Prayer-books in the church, the clergyman's, the clerk's, the Kentons',
and one discovered by an old Elmwood servant. The Squire's family
came not; Goody Grace was dead, and though Rusha tried to instruct her
husband and her little girl, she herself was much at a loss.

To Mr. Holworth it was almost like that rededication of the Temple when
the old men wept at the thought of the glory of the former house, but
there were some on whom his eye rested with joy and peace. There were
Blane and his wife, good and faithful though ignorant; there were the
old miller and his son, who had come all that distance since there
had as yet been no restoration in their church, and the goings on of
Original-Sin Hopkins and his friends had thoroughly disgusted them, and
made the old man yearn towards the church of his youth, and there was
the little group of three, the toil-worn but sweet-faced sister, calm
and restful, though watchful; the tall youth with thoughtful, earnest,
awe-struck face, come for his first Communion, for which through those
many years he had been taught to pray and long, and between them the
wasted form and wan features lighted up with that wonderful radiance
that had come on them with the sense th